There had been a terrible joy and satisfaction in his rheumy eyes as he told them about his favorite part of the show: the part where the two-headed scalie ate a live goat from both ends at once.
Legs first.
If the troupe hadn’t stopped over for those extra days, Ryan and the companions never would have caught up to them. The question was, why were the folks of Perdition still breathing air, and not buried in a ditch?
Compared to the unnamed ville where the mass chilling had been done, Perdition was a major metropolis. Which led Ryan to speculate that mebbe it was just too big for the chillers to tackle, and that’s why they had left it alone. Or mebbe they just skipped some villes along their route to throw any possible pursuit off the track.
The carny’s performance schedule had been posted on the side of a fire-gutted, semitrailer near the circle of tent holes. It turned out that the circus company was heading to a large ville several days southwest of Perdition before moving up the long, dry valley to an engagement at another big hamlet at its northern end.
The companions had taken the difficult, cross country shortcut to try to intersect the caravan’s route. The hills and mountains that framed the dry valley were impassable by wags; once the carny entered at the southern end, the only exit was far to the north. When Ryan and the others had seen the towering spirals of dust in the distance, they knew they had found their quarry.
By the time Ryan had finished detailing his long-blaster, the mound of trade goods on Mildred’s bedroll had grown impressively. She had put in a few .38-caliber cartridges. J.B. had added two empty mags and a mini toolkit for an M-16—a weapon they didn’t carry. Krysty had tossed in a pair of compact binocs with a cracked left lens, and Dean had given up a plastic-handled can opener that was near mint. J.B. scowled at the carny’s circled wags and said, “Mebbe the Magus himself is hiding over there. Like a nasty old spider, waiting for the fun to begin.”
“Be just like him,” Krysty said. “Crouching in the deep shadows while his puppets do all the dirty work.”
“The Magus may not have anything to do with the carny anymore,” Ryan said. “Not since Wolfram went west.”
“From what it looks like the carny is doing,” J.B. said, “it seems right up his street to me.”
“Mebbe,” Ryan said. “But looting the odd, shit-poor ville would be a big step down for him. The Magus has always been into mass slavery of muties and norms, mostly to support his mining operations and his jolt factories, but also for breeding stock.” The companions all knew the Magus was into animal husbandry. He specialized in the careful crossbreeding, and perhaps bioengineering, of new mutie races. Rumors abounded that he had “made” the first stickies. It was also rumored that he had acquired the power to travel forward and backward in time. That he had done evil deeds long before any person now alive had been born, and would do evil long after they were dust.
Deathlands was a place of little certain truth and much wild speculation. The only thing anybody knew for sure was that the Magus was a league of chiller above and beyond the run-of-the-mill, gaudy house backstabber.
“He’s back!” Dean exclaimed, pointing at the berm gate. “Jak’s back.”
The albino trotted across the compound at the same easy pace. Over his shoulder, its short front and long back legs trussed, was a skinned, dressed-out, thirty-pound mutie jackrabbit.
There had been no gunshot echo rolling over the valley. Ryan figured Jak had used one of the many leaf-bladed throwing knives hidden on his person to dispatch the rabbit.
“Why did he bring us dinner?” Dean asked his father. “I thought we were going to eat at the gaudy?”
The lion let out a blood-curdling roar that put an end to conversation.
It became clear that it wasn’t their dinner the albino had brought when he turned hard left and made a beeline for the row of trailered cages. Ignoring the crudely lettered Danger: Don’t Feed The Muties sign, Jak passed the fresh carcass through the bars to his brother beast.